Nature Moncton Nature News: March 1 2024

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

March 1, 2024

Nature Moncton members as well as any naturalist in New Brunswick or beyond are invited to share their photos and descriptions of recent nature sightings to build a fresh (almost) daily edition of Nature News

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Proofreading courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca

**On Thursday Gordon Rattray was pleased to have a visit from a male Red-bellied Woodpecker. It visited almost every day from mid-November until a last visit on January 30. The woodpecker was in the yard most of the day and seemed hungry.

Gordon also had a visit from a Sharp-shinned Hawk that has been around for a while but today sat for some photos, front and back. While Gordon had the camera up, an American Goldfinch female landed and wanted its photo taken.

**Jane LeBlanc had an American Tree Sparrow in her St. Martins yard Thursday morning after the storm cleared. Also, driving along the marsh, she noticed at least four Canada Geese.

** Shannon Inman got a few photos of the high water above Shepody Dam and Crooked Creek and a beaver in a flooded area due to the rain and snow melt Wednesday night.

**The fungal gall Black Knot (Apiosporina morbosa) is commonly seen on Prunus species such as Chokecherry, Pin Cherry, plum species, and Black Cherry.

Richard Perron sends photos of how it manifests itself on chokecherry. As mentioned, it affects Black Cherry as well but manifests itself differently in appearance on that species. Richard also took photos of Black Knot on a Black Cherry tree but we had some challenges differentiating the bark of the tree from Yellow Birch which led to a consultation with Doug Hiltz at the Maritime College of Forest Technology who responded with the very interesting comments quoted below:

“I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for some confusion on a casual observation here. As bark characteristics change over the life of a tree and are influenced by environmental factors you can get different species of different ages and in different areas looking very similar. Two of these genera are indeed Betula (birches) and Prunus (cherries, plums, apricots, almonds, etc). In particular you can often get younger black cherry (Prunus serotina) trees that look like older, low vigour yellow birch (Betula allegheniensis) trees. There is also actually a birch called black birch or sweet birch (Betula lenta) that has bark nearly identical to black cherry but it does not range this far north. Based on what I am seeing as far as the bark goes (patchy grey/silver and dark brown colour with some red shining through in places, an abundance of raised, laterally stretched lenticels that are not orange, which would indicate pin cherry, and the beginnings of bark scales forming) I would say you have a mid-aged black cherry here. In these cases even the fungal infection itself can be confusing as the outward appearance of black knot (Apiosporina morbosa) is very similar to chaga (Inonotus obliquus) with the black knot infecting only Prunus species and the chaga only infecting birches. The diagnostic there is quite simple even if you are unsure of the tree species. The black knot on cherry is hard and very hard to break into pieces while chaga is relatively soft, easily broken, and is a bright brownish orange colour inside. Anyway, I believe this one is indeed a black cherry with a black knot infection of the main stem.

On a side note. If you or any of your contributors or readers are interested in an aid for tree ID based on their bark, I can recommend the following book. I use it with my students and it is the only decent field guide specifically for bark that I have found. It is intended for the northeastern U.S. up to Maine so most of the species are the same as can be found in NB but with some slight differences in common names.”

(Editor’s note: my copy of this book is being delivered today!)

https://www.amazon.ca/Bark-Field-Guide-Trees-Northeast-dp-1684580315/dp/1684580315/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

**Bob Blake maintains daily weather statistics of morning low temperatures, daily high temperatures, and monthly precipitation from his second North River home.

Bob submits a table comparing the statistics of February 2023 to February 2024. Bob’s statistics at this local location show we had warmer temperatures in February 2024 and much of the precipitation was rainfall in 2024, whereas it was totally snow in 2023.

Bob’s table is below as he submitted it:

2023

2024

morning temperatures

daily highs and rainfall

morning temperatures

daily highs and rainfall

-26-1 day

-23-1

-21-1

-17-3

-16-1

-15-1

-13-1

-12-1

-11-1

-10-2

-7-2

-6-3

-5-3

-4-2

-3-1

0-1

+4-1

+6-1

+9-1

39 cms. snow

-17-1

-16-2

-13-2

-9-3

-7-2

-6-3

-4-3

-3-3

-2-1

-1-4

0-1

+1-1

+8-1

+10-1

+7-1

+6-1

+4-1

+3-2

+2-5

23 cms. snow

68 mms.rain

**Friday has arrived and our day to review what next week’s sky may have in store for us for the first week of March, courtesy of sky guru Curt Nason.

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2024 March 2 – March 9
This is a good time to search for a few obscure constellations, if you are up for the challenge. The trio will be at their best, as it were, an hour or two before midnight. You will need dark, clear skies and a good view to the south.

Below Regulus, at the heart of Leo, and to the left of Alphard in serpentine Hydra, is a collection of faint stars that forms Sextans the Sextant. Johannes Hevelius, the creator of Leo Minor, came up with this constellation to commemorate the sextant that he used for measuring star positions, and which he lost when his observatory burned in 1679. Good luck with seeing a sextant here; perhaps it represents what was left after the fire.

Below Sextans and Hydra, very near the horizon, is Antlia the Air Pump. Nicholas Louis de La Caille was an 18th century astronomer who also created obscure constellations to fill in gaps in the sky. The laboratory air pump is one of several scientific instruments honoured with a position in the stars during that era, but in our sky it seems to be past its prime. If you think of a compass as a needle then Pyxis the Compass does look like what it represents. It is between Antlia and Puppis to its right, again low in our sky even at its best. Originally part of the mast of Argo Navis in Ptolemy’s star chart, La Caille reimagined it as a mariner’s compass, although it is pretty much lost in our sky.

This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise in Moncton is at 6:55 and sunset will occur at 6:07, giving 11 hours, 12 minutes of daylight (6:59 and 6:13 in Saint John). Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 6:42 and set at 6:17, giving 11 hours, 35 minutes of daylight (6:46 and 6:22 in Saint John).

The Moon is at third quarter and near Antares this Saturday morning. It is in the middle of the Sagittarius Teapot asterism Wednesday morning, and on Thursday it makes a challenging wide binocular line-up with Venus and Mars above the horizon shortly after 6 am. By midweek Mercury begins its best evening apparition, setting half an hour after sunset but getting easier to see over the next few weeks. Jupiter sets around 11 pm midweek, and on Thursday its moon Ganymede is eclipsed by the planet’s shadow at 8:21. Over the week we have the opportunity to see the subtle zodiacal light from a dark sky in the west, about an hour after sunset.

The Saint John Astronomy Club meets in the Rockwood Park Interpretation Centre at 7 pm on March 2. On Sunday evening at 8 pm, tune in to the Sunday Night Astronomy Show via the Facebook page or YouTube channel of Astronomy by the Bay.

Questions? Contact Curt Nason at nasonc@nbnet.nb.ca.